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- Convenors:
-
Barbro Blehr
(Stockholm University)
Maria Zackariasson (Södertörn University)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Religion
- Location:
- KWZ 1.601
- Start time:
- 28 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The panel invites papers on people's ways of finding their place or feeling at home in religious settings. Papers may focus on a variety of religious sites and communities, as well as on how religious dwelling/s are intertwined with the acts and attitudes of various kinds of Others.
Long Abstract:
The panel "Religious dwelling/s" invites the exploration of people's ways of relating to and living with religion. The topic may encompass for example the experience (pleasant or the opposite) of feeling at home in a religious world; the struggle to make a religious setting your home or to escape from it; the efforts to keep a messy religious community together, or the art of sharing it with people that you do not like. The inhabited "sites" may be more or less substantial, from buildings and shrines and IRL congregations to communities and dwellings that are less tangible.
We encourage participants to explore religious attachments of all kinds, from the full-time and whole-hearted belonging, to relationships that may be hesitating, part-time and even unwilling. Likewise, we suggest that panellists pay attention to the attitudes and expectations of the surrounding society, not least seeing that these may differ profoundly between different local, regional and national contexts as well as historically. The significance of societal changes - where are we coming from and where are we going - is another important issue to address, as well as the question of how religious dwelling/s are preconditioned by and intertwined with the acts of various kinds of Others.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
For centuries, folk orthodox practices have co-existed with animist conduct in a Komi village. During the post-Soviet period, charismatic Protestant groups moved into the Komi rural areas. People join these new groups on various reasons and religious identities become obscure in this process.
Paper long abstract:
The Komi people were converted into Christianity at the end of the 14th century, being thus the first indigenous group to adopt Russian Orthodoxy in the eastern areas of the Russian North. Over time, the Eastern Christian faith became deeply integrated part of Komi culture and people predominantly consider it normal to be an Orthodox believer. After the Soviet period, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) infrastructure and professional religious specialists were basically absent in the Republic of Komi. Religious practice was kept alive by religious grannies who conducted needed minimum of religious ritual services (baptising children, arranging funerals). Although the ROC restores its positions in the region intensively, certain tensions between folk orthodox traditions and the official line of ROC remain.
Charismatic Protestant missions have spread over the Komi lands to fill "the spiritual vacuum". People with folk orthodox religious identity join these missions easily but they do not give up their actual religious feelings. The choice of Protestantism is often a matter of opportunity for them (it may be that a Protestant church is the only one they have a realistic possibility to visit as ROC is still not effective enough in reaching people). An important source of misunderstanding between the Protestant missionaries and local people lays in differences of basic narrative strategies. While the missionaries aim to reveal the truth about the faith directly, folk orthodox-animist rules of speaking (adopted in rural communities) prescribe much more hazy dialogue. Thus, the people are slightly suspicious about the Protestant agenda.
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses how the experience of feeling at home and being part of a community may contribute to young people’s choice to be active in a Christian youth organization. It is based on a qualitative study of a Swedish youth organization and the material is analyzed from an emotion work perspective
Paper long abstract:
As this paper will discuss, being active in a religious organization is not something automatically accepted or uncontroversial among young people in Sweden, a society which in several aspects is characterized by a high level of secularization. Still, a number of youths are engaged in Christian youth organizations, even though they do not necessarily come from religiously active homes. What contributes to their choice to become active in this kind of organization and what makes them want to stay active there? These are questions discussed in this paper, which is based on a qualitative research project about young people active in the Christian youth organization Equmenia in Sweden.
The results from the project show that the experience of feeling at home, being able to be oneself and being part of a community where they felt everyone was accepted, were significant contributing factors for the youths' will to stay active in the organization. In the paper I use an emotion theoretical approach, with a focus on emotion work and everyday rituals and collective practices, to discuss how such an inclusive atmosphere and feeling of togetherness could be created. But also how such rituals and collective practices at times had the opposite effect, in the sense that they created atmospheres that could contribute to that certain situations and contexts were experienced as strange and unpleasant, and to that the youths felt out of place rather than at home.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores religious dwelling and the intervening state and local institutions, in the context of a UNESCO cultural heritage - performance of Tibetan Epic Gesar.
Paper long abstract:
King Gesar shrining and worship are important everyday religious practices in Kham and Amdo Tibet. They are generally related to sacred mountain beliefs which territorialize dwelling spaces for local communities. Performance of Tibetan Epic Gesar is a UNESCO cultural heritage which features a pervasive system of practices involving the dissemination of religious and cultural knowledge. Besides the chanting of this mythic tale, prayers to King Gesar both as a part of performances and as everyday religious practices are inseparable from this epic tradition. Being enlisted by the UNESCO has profoundly changed the way this epic tradition is received and transmitted by local people and authorities. And the game between local religious authority's enshrining King Gesar and national institute's objectifying epic performances as cultural capital also started. The debates derive from its dual function of being both an index of national cultural diversity and a local religious sign. This paper focuses on the process of negotiation among local, domestic and international parties. It reveals the interesting aspects where traditional religious forms constitute a social force that transmits new values to national and local institutions.
The related field researches were carried out in Derge town, Kham Tibetan area, and Zaduo town, Amdo Tibetan area, where national ethnic policies and socio-economic structures bring complexity to local religious practices. Based on demographic data and detailed oral accounts, I look into the inner tension of value systems that belong to different authorities and to the individuals who perform the everyday religious practices.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines, firstly, the ongoing process of re-interpretation of the concept of “sacred place” operated by a Zen Buddhist monastery in Italy. Then, it analyses how that model is related to local perspectives through the notion of “village”.
Paper long abstract:
The aim of this paper is to explore how a Sōtō Zen Buddhist community in Italy interpreted the concept of "sacred place" and "village" in relation to, on one hand, the Japanese monastic life pattern and, on the other, to the local context.
Since the 1960s, the spread of Zen Buddhism in Europe hinged on the dissemination of myriads of ephemeral "meditation centres". The contingent form of the early proselytism and the anti-institutional attitude of the newly European Buddhists strongly influenced their concept of "sacred space". Usually, the meditation centres were set up in rented places as gyms and garages, or in private rooms and apartments. Even today, with the progressive installation of institutional Buddhism, most of the zen dōjō (道場) is constituted by relatively small places, blended in the urban landscape.
The community where I conduct my fieldwork was founded in the early 1980s. Contrary to the common trends in European Buddhism, the saṁgha began to elaborate a deep reflection on the concept of "dwelling" in a sacred space (ji 寺). The monastery and temple started to implement the physical configuration of the space through a symbolic architecture that not only pursued the traditional temple layout (shichidō-garan 七堂伽藍) but also - with the construction of tiny little houses - tried to recover the concept of "village" to become the gravitational centre of an extended community where laypeople also can find their physical and symbolic home.
Paper short abstract:
What is it like to be a church for a mainstream majority in a secularised country? This paper explores that issue mainly from the perspective of a local congregation of the Church of Sweden, paying attention to activities and commitments as well as difficulties and challenges.
Paper long abstract:
In an international perspective, Sweden stands out as a secularised country, not least as regards its Christian heritage. The Lutheran Church of Sweden, the former state church, has lost 1,5 million members during the last forty years, and seen its share of the population shrink from 94 to 63% in the same period. Furthermore, vast amounts of these members declare in surveys that they do not identify as religious, and/or do not believe in traditional Christian tenets.
In such a setting, what can it be like to uphold a church for the mainstream majority? How can its mission for the future be envisioned, and how can one try to fulfil it? This paper will address those questions mainly from the perspective of a local congregation and its staff, through the lens of their weekly meetings. Those meetings are the arena where activities are planned and coordinated, events are evaluated, and everyday routines are organised and honed. Thereby, the meetings can serve as a window into the complexity of the commitments and activities of the congregation. But they also make palpable a range of difficulties that come with the task of being church in our time. The paper will reflect upon the various activities and their reasons why, and comment upon some of the challenges involved. One such challenge is to reconcile - or at least manage the combination of - vision, organisation and marketing.